Festival Snores

A man in mud yesterday

Glastonbury music festival is sh!t. There, I have said it seeing as everyone else is either too fooled by it or too afraid to speak out through fear of being labelled 'uncool'. And its not just 'Glasto' but festivals in general. I went to the Phoenix festival in 1995 and had probably the worst three days Id ever spent in jolly old England (and believe me, there's been a few.) Sheer purgatory.
These things are nothing more than people desperately trying to cling on to a rapidly disappearing youth. Its not even about the bands anymore as capitalism runs rampant with company brands and logos splashed over everything. Like I said, sh!t.
Ive heard Glastonbury described thus: "a brilliant celebration of performing arts, the circus field, the comedy tents, all kinds of stuff going on." Yeah and lets not forget the botulism from bad, overpriced food, open drug dealing, spotty cretins thieving from tents, risk of ebola from visiting the toilets and locals lives being made a misery while the party is in town. A party which doesn't even sound right because the sound quality at festivals is generally pretty poor. I think ferret sound engineers from Outer Akinzaboola are involved.
Even my beloved former 'Monsters of Rock' event has morphed into the dreadful sounding 'Download' festival (and stretched over the obligatory 3 days.) Im not suggesting festivals have always been bad but for the past 15 years or so they have certainly lost the plot. Oh and for what its worth, I have always thought the artists that have appeared at Glasto have been more miss than hit. Just another 2 cents to consider. Now I realise this will be almost blasphemous to some people so Id better sign off as there is only enough sacrilege a man can take in one day.

Overkill Killing the Times

When Dai Jakes was 15, things were a lot different. There was no interwebz for one, and things like Twitter and Blackberry did what they said on the tin; birds tweeted and blackberries were made into pie and eaten with cream. If you were a fan of anything, you usually had to wait a while to learn whatever it was you were a fan of was doing. For instance Mr Jakes was into heavy metal but had to wait for Metal Hammer or Kerrang! to come out before hearing what Iron Maiden were up to that week.
And you want to know something? I kind of miss it. I could take it in better because it was bite sized. These days I can find out what all the singers and guitarists are doing every five minutes and truth be told its overwhelming. Quite boring too in one way as the BREAKING NEWS plods on in endless Tweets and Facebook feeds. Relentless like a mad typewriter overdosing on words. The excitement has gone, fled no doubt in fear of being drowned by the constant updates.
Now all this is fine if you happen to be a teenager with the enthusiasm those years bring, but to those of us reaching into the scrensavers of our forties, its not so much fun. Of course we can turn off everything and go back to buying weekly magazines but this is the future, the interwebz is here to stay so we might as well get used to information overload. Perhaps this is the trigger that will send mankind all crazy come the much speculated end of the world?
Too much information. It can be very liberating and empowering but there is a danger that it can also lead to stripping of all that was previously mysterious, leaving a bland landscape, devoid of adventure.
Too much information. Approach with care.

**And just to be clear, Dai Jakes loves the web. Being a blog, it is it lifesblood and readers can also find us elsewhere online.